French Polynesia

I hear you think: are you on some kinda religious trip? No, a Christian in this case refers to the last name of one of the mutineers of the Bounty, back during the late 18th century. And now history repeats because I am on a boat called Bounty Bay with Andrew Christian, 7th generation of Fletcher Christian, the mutiny leader on the original Bounty. Luckily for me peace was kept on this boat.
So now I finally reached Pitcairn Island on one of the most adventurous trips I have ever taken and will probably ever take anyhow. Getting here from Europe requires at least 3 to 4 full days of travelling which is almost unheard of nowadays with all those airplanes being able to fly to every corner in the world.
I left Holland on Saturday the 7th of March and after a night at the airport I was ready for my marathon flight from Amsterdam via Paris and Los Angeles to Tahiti, which took a massive 29 hours. Still, due to the time difference we managed to arrive there the same day. After a good 14 hour sleep there wasn't much more I wished to do on Monday, but relax and drink a icecold Hinano Tahiti beer...or two.
On Tuesday, an early flight took me to Mangareva in the Gambier Archipelago, in the southeastern corner of French Polynesia. From the airport, a shuttle boat went to the main harbor where the captain of the Bounty Bay, Austrian Kurt, picked us up. Us in this case meant me and my cousin Eric (erodrigo on TP!), 4 Americans and a guy from Norway.

And from then on adventure started already. The Bounty Bay really is a basic boat! On top of that 3 of the Americans and the Norwegian guy were surprised that this wasn't a trip where diving was the main thing to do. So, well, after a while they just took off and were about to contact the owner, Dr. Graham, to get some clarification. Basically, my opinion is that they just weren't informed quite well....although everything is on the internet! Because of all this hassle we were not able to leave Mangareva on Tuesday anymore, so we spend the night on board, did some groceries (meaning beer) in the morning and finally took off early morning on Wednesday the 11th of March. So in this case, we meant only one American guy called Tom (great person!), my cousin and me, Kurt, Andrew and last but not least: Jack, the mechanic from Tuvalu. His skills were going to be of extreme importance during the next days. More about that in the next chapter!

Pitcairn, here I come!